The present disclosure relates to identifying authorities within a community, and to the use of machine learning to achieve that task.
One context in which it is useful to identify sources of authority is online social networks. The emergence of the web2.0 phenomenon has set in place a planetary-scale infrastructure for rapid proliferation of information and ideas. Social media platforms such as blogs, twitter accounts, and online discussion sites are large-scale forums where every individual can voice a potentially influential public opinion. According to recent surveys a massive number of internet users are turning to such forums to collect recommendations and reviews for products and services shaping their choices and stances by the commentary of the online community as a whole.
A traditional approach to organizing network information is ranking web-pages in a hyperlinked environment. Examples include                PageRank from Page, L., Brin, S., Motwani, R., and Winograd, T., “The pagerank citation ranking: Bringing order to the web,” Tech. Rep., Stanford Digital Libraries, 1998. And        Hubs-and-Authorities per Kleinberg, Jon M. “Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment,” Journal of the ACM, 46:668-677, 1999.        